A History of North Omaha’s Belt Line Railway

Almost a decade ago, I stumbled across stories of a railroad that looped around Omaha. Different sources told crazy realities, including conflicting ownership, court cases, and the rise and fall of several neighborhoods in North Omaha. I was fascinated that I saw this track all the time when I was growing up, but I never knew its story, so I started researching. I read articles and pamphlets, books and maps. After that, I started an article on Wikipedia to share what I’d found.

Well, as you know, that’s never enough for me. With some recent encouragement from John Peterson, a fine Omaha history writer, I am going to expand here on what I’ve researched and learned about the Belt Line Railway in North Omaha.

Big Dreams in the Old Days

The Webster Street Station at North 15th and Webster around 1940. The North Omaha Railyard extend northwards beyond the Nicholas Street Viaduct.

A lot of African Americans and European immigrants came to Omaha to work for the railroad, or to work for industries that depended on Omaha’s railroads, including the stockyards and smelters. In North Omaha, many people worked in small warehouses and light industry scattered across the city. Moving up from the South, African Americans worked on the railroads as porters and in maintenance positions. European immigrants got work as gandy dancers, sometimes working themselves up to being secondman, length runner, or boilerman.

All of these men wanted to live by their jobs, which were generally stationed at either the Union Pacific shops or the Union Station. The closest neighborhood for many was the Near North Side, which was established and built between 1860 and 1870. So many African American train workers lived on two blocks there that it was referred to as Portertown. The railroads, including the Union Pacific, the Burlington, the Missouri Pacific, and others made money, and there was an air of prosperity in Omaha in the late 1870s and early 1880s.

Big dreams came from this era. One of them belonged to Jay Gould. Gould was a renowned robber baron and one of the richest men in America. In the late 1850s, he began throwing money into New York railroads and got tied up with the notorious Tammany Hall. By 1879, Gould controlled several western railroads, including the Missouri Pacific Railroad. He was an extremely wealthy man.

Glamorous Railroading in Omaha

An engine with passenger cars roars northwards from the Webster Street Station circa 1920.

Like all robber barons of the Gilded Age, Gould wanted to become richer. He thought he could wind his Missouri Pacific Railroad around Omaha and make a buck doing it. However, instead of doing it himself he bamboozled the Union Pacific Railroad to build it for him. Using materials from both railroads along with Union Pacific labor, the tracks were laid quickly and without a lot of issues. Historians still don’t know exactly how Gould pulled this off!

What we do know is that Gould knew his railroad only had access to downtown Omaha from the south by using Union Pacific tracks, and saw that he needed to get direct access to downtown Omaha for his own company. However, they weren’t funded well, and the Union Pacific was. Somehow, Gould pitched the Union Pacific on what they should do and they did it.

In 1883, Gould created a new company called the Omaha Belt Line Railway and stacked the board of directors with his Omaha friends and allies. While they appeared loyal to the Union Pacific project, they did the bidding of Gould. Guaranteed there was some paper used to grease those wheels!

Out of these shenanigans, the Belt Line was born. It was a 15-mile long railroad that went around what were Omaha’s outskirts in 1885. Carrying passengers and cargo, it was operated by the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Not coincidentally, the Missouri Pacific line merged with the Belt Line in South Omaha, leading that railroad directly into downtown Omaha. Mail, passengers and freight travelled around the city with ease for more than 20 years.

However, as a passenger railroad it didn’t really work. Turned out that people from the Near North Side neighborhood didn’t want to visit Walnut Hill very often, and people in Rockbrook just weren’t that connected to the people in Florence.

The Belt Line Built Neighborhoods

Between Talyor and Sahler was a street called Boyd. In this 1946 pic, we’re looking at a crossing for the Belt Line tracks over streetcar tracks on North 24th Street. There are warehouses built here just to capitalize on the railroad’s presence. Several stand there still today.

The Belt Line essentially started at the Webster Street Station at North 15th and Webster Streets. From there, the route went through the Missouri Pacific North Omaha rail yards along the bluffs where North 15th Street would be. It went northwards underneath the Locust Street viaduct to cross the trestle at North 16th and Commercial Avenue, and crossed Commercial north of Sahler Street. From there it went west and south to cross North 30th Street just south of Ames, then angled south and west towards North 31st and Sprague. Then it went south to North 40th and Lake, to Military Avenue and Hamilton, and then and southwest to hop Cuming Street across a trestle towards the Saddle Creek and California area, where it continued south and west towards Dodge. From there it went southward. Way back at Nicholas Street, there was an alley spur that went due west between Izard Street and Nicholas Street for several blocks.

Starting at Webster, the Belt Line went through the Nicholas Street Historic District; north through unnamed railroad land; east through the Saratoga neighborhood; south into the Druid Hill neighborhood and toward the Walnut Hill neighborhood. It then relied on the Saddle Creek neighborhood before it crossed Dodge.

In all those neighborhoods, the Belt Line built light industry and big ambition. Starting with the main yard at Nicholas Street, small businesses popped up along the way. They manufactured all kinds of goods and provided a variety of services. Along the length of the line, the Belt Line also crossed a lot of other railroads and created more business that way, too.

Through junctions with the Union Pacific; the Chicago and Northwestern Railway; the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway, also called the Omaha Road; and the Illinois Central, the Belt Line provided ample opportunity to move passengers and freight easily across Omaha, throughout Nebraska and across the United States.

Passengers generally stopped using the Belt Line for around-the-city service by the 1890s, if only because streetcars went everywhere they wanted to by then. With the advent of personal car ownership by the 1920s, passengers were gone entirely. However, for the next 50 years, the Belt Line hauled a variety of freight around Omaha, moving products easily from North and central Omaha to the mainline railroads downtown, and out into the world from there.

The Omaha Towel and Linen Service warehouse at North 24th and Boyd Streets was one of many warehouses built along the length of the Belt Line to capitalize on the convenient rail service.

Stations and Depots

The Missouri Pacific Railroad logo.

By far, the most important station associated with the Belt Line Railway was the Webster Street Station, located at North 15th and Webster Streets. It was used by four railroads, including the Missouri Pacific; the Sioux City and Pacific; the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley; and the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railroads. There was also a separate freight station at North 15th and Nicholas that was constantly busy.

However, there were several other depots for the Belt Line across North Omaha. They were:

Webster Street Station, North 15th and Webster Street

Nicholas Street Freight Depot, North 15th and Nicholas Street

Oak Chatham Depot, 4351 North 22nd Street

Druid Hill Depot, North 32nd and John Creighton Boulevard

Lake Street Depot, North 40th and Lake Street

Nicholas Street Depot, North 43rd and Nicholas Street

Walnut Hill Depot, Military Avenue and Hamilton Street

Each of these varied in size and purpose. However, originally, all of them carried passengers. The Webster Street Station served multiple railroads too, allowing passengers to move easily from the Missouri Pacific to all points nationwide.

The Demise of the Railroads

The Webster Street Station showing cars waiting for loads and exchanges immediately north and below the station.

By the 1960s, gas was cheap and big rigs ruled the interstates. The fate of railroads seemed to be doomed, and the industries that relied on the Belt Line quit using the railroad. by the growth in long-distance trucking from the 1960s, the Belt Line was abandoned in the 1980s, leaving a wide swath of underutilized space cutting through the city.

The line was abandoned and removed piecemeal throughout the 1980s and 1990s as freight customers moved to bigger facilities away from the rail line and public transportation service in Omaha became less popular and dominated by an inefficient bus system. Today a portion of the Belt Line has been turned into the MoPac Trail (MoPac being the age-old nickname of the Missouri Pacific Railroad), also known as the “Field Club Trail”, a recreational trail in Omaha. A small portion of the Belt Line Railway is still in use on the extreme south end of the line, which now serves as a “spur”(a dead end railroad track that provides access to one or more industries) to several South Omaha industries near Dahlman Avenue. It is operated by the Union Pacific Railroad.

The corridor now perfectly aligns many of the region’s most important new centers of education, transit, health, and employment with the city’s core, where jobs and services are concentrated along east-west corridors. A local nonprofit called Emerging Terrain was founded a few years ago, and promoted repurposing the Belt Line to become a modern light rail route coupled with a pedestrian and bike path. Their work was ahead of its time, and the project died young.

In 1954, this crowd of Omaha businessmen hopped onto a Missouri Pacific Railroad train at the Webster Street Station to tour the Belt Line Railway as a promotion for the space available to build along the tracks around town. Notice the Storz Brewery smokestack and Mother’s Best Flour ad in the background.

Special thanks to John Peterson, Anne R. Trimble and Dick Ryker, Richard Orr, Michele Wyman, and everyone else who contributed directly and indirectly to this article.

Related Articles

Elsewhere Online

“Belt Line” by Emerging Terrain. An enormous and excellent vision for the potential reuse of the Belt Line Railroad, including light rail, trails, and an excellent community-based planning process to engage Omaha.

When you comment on my articles, everyone can see what you’ve written Jim, so feel free to share more here! Plus, I treat all these articles as works-in-progress, so I’ll add more as I learn more. Want to school me?

Hi Adam. I’m looking for more information specifically on the Benson Motor Company. I’m doing some research on an old building located on the south west corner of 56th and Northwest Radial. I’ve heard that this building was originally a repair shop for the Benson line, but I’m having trouble finding more information on the line other than the whos and whens.

Hey Jason, thanks for your note. I’ve dug up some info, but nothing more than whos and whens! I’m going to stick them into a quick article though, and I’ll credit you as the inspiration for it. I have one other thought to chase before I publish it though – more on that in a moment. In the meantime, I’d suggest you track down a copy of Richard Orr’s self-published book (the Omaha Public Library has copies). If you’re not familiar with it, Orr chronicled all the city’s streetcar happenings in encyclopedic detail. I’m away from my office right now, but when I’m back in a few weeks I’ll cross-reference that book against what I publish. The last place I’m going to look online is at the Omaha World-Herald online archives for any mention of a streetcar barn at the location you mentioned. Maybe? Thanks again for your note!

Jason, according to the Douglas County Assessor’s Office website, the white building on the southwest corner of 56th and NW Radial wasn’t built until 1956. However, their records are notoriously inaccurate, so it warrants more looking. Is that the one you’re talking about?

Yes, that is the correct building. Let me know if you find out anything more about it. I have been unable to find its original use or any use of it up until it was a coffee shop/music venue called common grounds. I’m not even sure when that was.

One of the reasons Jay Gould was able to get the Union Pacific to build the Belt Line was that he was President of the UP during part of the time. He also built the Kansas Pacific from Kansas City to Denver and basically forced the UP to buy the route.

The Belt Line actually ran commuter trains between the Ralston area and Webster Street.The commuter trains ended around 1900. The Missouri Pacific mainline passenger trains moved to the Union Station before the 1900 depot was built

One correction. The photo in the article titled Webster Street Stationisactually the Chicago and North Western freight depot a few blocks south of the Webster Station